Citi Bike to Meet With Bronx Borough President After Critical Comments

August 5, 2015

Will we see Citi Bike stations in the Bronx and Staten Island?Citi Bike

The first 500 people to register for Citi Bike in Jersey City get a free tote bag. They should be so lucky in the Bronx, the borough of 1.4 million that for now can only dream of a fully stocked bay of the shiny, royal-blue bicycles.

“It is deplorable that Citi Bike is expanding to New Jersey before the rest of the city,” said Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. “My borough deserves better, as do the parts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island that are not currently served by our city’s official bike share program.”

We asked Citi Bike rep Dani Simons when the program would come to the Bronx:

“Once we are confident that our expansion is off to a good start, we welcome conversations with city officials on how we can meet the mayor’s goal of bringing Citi Bike to all five boroughs,” Simons said.

The farthest uptown one can check out a Citi Bike is at Broadway and 60th Street, though new stations are planned for as far uptown as 85th Street.

John DeSio, communications director for Diaz, tells the Voice that the Citi Bike team contacted Diaz’s office after the latter sent out an email with those harsh remarks to the media. DeSio says the office expects to set up a meeting in the near future to explore next steps. Simons writes that the meeting will happen in the next few weeks.

The other borough that remains without the bike-sharing program is Staten Island. Its borough president says his office has asked that the program be expanded there, but — and we’ll take a stab at finishing James S. Oddo’s sentence, here — don’t hold your breath.

The Citi Bike expansion in New York results from a bulked-up donation from Citibank of $70.5 million through 2024, a $21 million increase in credit from the Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group, and more money from the investors of Motivate, the firm that runs bike-sharing programs in eleven cities across the globe.